Missing
the Real Culprit Once Again

by
Thomas A. Droleskey

The prayers
of millions upon millions of Catholics have been answered. The man who
was attempting to sell on eBay what he purported to a consecrated Host
distributed to him by a priest at a Mass in Saint Peter's Square on
October 18, 1998, for the twentieth anniversary of the election of Pope
John Paul II has had a change of heart and is taking the Host off of
eBay so that it can be turned over to the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa.
A Catholic in Cupertino, California, had agreed to purchase the Host
for $2,000 to save It from being used in a black Mass or to be otherwise
further desecrated. A report from Spirit Daily, which was sent
to me via an e-mail from Mr. John Vennari of Catholic Family News,
reads as follows:

We
are pleased to report that the sale of what was purported to be a Host
consecrated by Pope John Paul II and put up for sale on eBay, the on-line
auctioneer, has been withdrawn, with the Host handed over to the Diocese
of Sioux City, Iowa, where the seller is located [ see
previous story ].

The
issue garnered national media attention when, within minutes of a link
to it on this website Wednesday night,, a Cupertino, California, man
offered $2,000 for the Host to keep it out of the hands of witches,
satanists, or souvenir hunters.

Although
eBay claimed it received "a few" protests, the California man told us
that he received 500 e-mails in just the several hours his address was
displayed on Spirit Daily, before he asked us to remove
his name, preferring anonymity.

Earlier
Friday, Monsignor Roger J. Augustine, administrator of the Diocese of
Sioux City, met with the seller and was advised that the sale would
not be consummated. According to Msgr. Augustine, the seller deeply
regretted the effort to sell the Eucharist and extended a personal apology
to him, the diocese and any others who had been offended by the eBay
listing. Because the transaction never materialized, there was
no money exchanged or received.

"The Eucharist detailed in the eBay auction was given to Msgr. Augustine
and has been properly disposed of according to the dictates of Catholic
Church law," states a diocesan press release. "'As I said earlier this
week, the Eucharist represents the true presence of Jesus Christ to
Catholics,' said Msgr. Augustine. 'I am most grateful that the
seller agreed that it was in everyone's best interest to bring this
issue to a positive conclusion.'"

Continues the press release: "The issue of the attempted sale of the
Eucharist has attracted both national and international attention with
e-mails and fax messages coming into the diocesan office from countless
communities. Although this specific issue has been resolved, the diocese
still has differences with eBay and its policy governing the listing
of items that are offensive to people of faith. E-Bay officials
contend they see nothing offensive with the sale of such items on their
website. Many Catholic organizations and individuals have taken issue
with that policy and apparently are making their opinions known to eBay
officials."

Meanwhile,
the man who purchased the Host, a member of the Knights of Columbus,
told us that he is more than pleased with the outcome. "I'm overwhelmed
with the silent majority and how they spoke up and took action in this
case," he told us , referring to the many who voiced
outrage [ see
secular report ].

There
were two bids before he placed his $2,000 offer, one for $120 and one
for $150.

"I
am not a Catholic and do not believe I'm going to hell for selling this
collectible," said the owner in his original advertisement.
"It's a memento from that great afternoon with Pope John
Paul II. Yes, this is the actual Eucharist I saved during the Mass that
I participated in on October 18th, 1998. I ate one wafer then I went
back and got another one to save and he gave me another one, but I did
get a very dirty look! I was studying in Florence that semester and
a bunch of us went down to Rome that week to partake. I'm not Catholic,
but I found it all very interesting. Along with the Eucharist, I have
the program from that day and a little bulletin. It's all in Italian.
I also have four stamps from the Vatican that year and a bottle opener
that I bought when I was in Rome way back in 1992. From what I understand,
if you're holding something in your hand during a certain moment when
Pope John Paul II spoke during his Mass, it becomes blessed. I was holding
this bottle opener during Mass with him in 1992. It has his picture
on one side and a picture of the Trevi Fountain on the other."

The
seller went on to explain that everything from 1998 (Eucharist, bulletin,
program, and stamps) were encased in plastic in his "scratch book" and
all were in "awesome condition." Photos authenticating his presence
there that day were also to be included (although we cannot verify any
of his claims).

This is indeed
quite welcome news, the fruit of countless acts of reparation that had
been made worldwide once the sale of what was purported to be a consecrated
Host on eBay had become public knowledge earlier this week. Prayer really
does work. We must be ceaseless in prayer at all times, especially in
circumstances such as these when all human appearances seem so bleak
and foreboding. The truly just outcome in this case should remind us
all to trust completely at all time in the Providence and the Omniscience
of God, offering all of our efforts in the ecclesiastical and civil
circumstances in which we find ourselves at present to Him through Our
Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart as her consecrated slaves. This
is the same kind of trust that we must have as the cardinal electors
meet on Monday, April 18, 2005, to elect a successor to the late Pope
John Paul II.

Although there
has been a very happy and just outcome in the matter of the attempted
sale of what was represented to be a consecrated Host oni eBay, Catholics
must cease to do business with a firm that is willing to accept for
sale an item that purports to be (and most likely is) the actual Body,
Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the
Most Blessed Sacrament until eBay changes its policies, which it has
not yet done. It does not matter how many traditional Catholic items
are on eBay that cannot be found anywhere else. Catholics should not
be selling or buying items on eBay from this moment forward. If this
means that it will become more difficult to obtain hard-to-find traditional
Catholic vestments and unwanted statues and liturgical accoutrements,
so be it. We cannot do business with a firm that will not ban the sale
of the singularly most sacred Object that exists on the face of this
earth: a validly consecrated Host. Indeed, I announced three days ago
that Christ or Chaos, Inc., was terminating its relationship with PayPal,
an eBay company, because of this outrage.

Executives
from eBay provided the expected responses to those who complained about
the sale of what was purported to be a consecrated Host. Here is a response
sent to Mr. Gary Morella, whose own commentaries are fairly widely known
to traditional Catholics:

We
understand that you are upset at having seen certain Catholic items
or items related to the Pope on eBay, including item #6169851381. Because
eBay's community is a diverse, international group of more than 135
million users with varied backgrounds and beliefs, there are times when
some items listed on eBay by sellers might be offensive to at least
some of our users somewhere in the world. At times, members may see
listings that they may consider morally wrong or objectionable. However,
even though these listings may be offensive to some, please remember
that most of the time the law does not prohibit the items.

Due to the fact that eBay's focus is to have a free and diverse community,
we are reluctant to interfere with listings that are not illegal. Regarding
offensive items, there are many items that are considered sacred to
many people of various religions, and we sometimes hear complaints about
these items. Examples would be Catholic relics of saints, Mormon (LDS)
garments, certain Buddhist tablets, etc. However, eBay has made the
decision not to prohibit any item only on the basis of the item being
endowed with sacred properties by certain religious groups. In general,
eBay will remove items for a violation of our Offensive Materials policy
only in extreme examples in which the listing explicitly promotes hatred,
violence, or racial intolerance. However, we do not remove religious
items that are otherwise legal for sale and do not violate any other
eBay listing policy.

Please keep in mind that many of us at eBay may also share your distaste
with an item, and may not support the sale. In fact, eBay has many Catholic
employees. However, we do our best to understand and tolerate the many
viewpoints held by our worldwide community. The Eucharist is not illegal
to sell, and is generally allowed on eBay as long as the seller does
not otherwise include hateful text or images in the listing.

Although we realize that you may not agree with this decision on eBay's
part, we hope that you can respect the diverse and open nature of eBay's
marketplace. Warm Regards, Maricel, Community Watch Team, eBay Trust
& Safety.

I will leave
it to others to dissect the religious indifferentism, self-righteousness,
and hypocrisy contained in "Maricel's" response to Mr. Morella.
After all, ladies and gentlemen, the "sensitivity to diversity"
tack taken by "Maricel" as opposed to a respect for and protection
of the integrity of the Most Blessed Sacrament is but a product of the
very religious indifferentism that is at the founding of the Modern
State, including the United States of America. Individuals and companies
who make millions upon millions, if not billions upon billions, of dollars
as the sole raison d'etre of human existence (as opposed, say,
to giving honor and glory to God, advancing the sanctification and salvation
of human souls, contributing to the common good according to the precepts
of the Ten Commandments, especially the Seventh Commandment) are not
going to be persuaded to prohibit the sale of an item that will generate
money for them solely because some adherents of a particular religious
denomination "consider" such a sale to be a sacrilege of the
highest order. While eBay may be forced to modify its "policies"
in light of the bad publicity it is getting at present, the fact that
the sale of what was purported to be a consecrated Host, distributed
at a Papal Mass in Saint Peter's Square, was attempted at alll is just
part and parcel of a culture founded on the specific and categorical
rejection of a necessity of belief in the Incarnation of the God-Man
in His Blessed Mother's virginal and immaculate womb and of adherence
to every single jot and tittle of the Deposit of Faith He entrusted
to His true Church as absolutely indispensable to the direction of individual
lives and thus to entire nations.

No, while
pressure should continue to be brought upon eBay to prohibit the sale
of consecrated Hosts, and while Father Paul Kramer of the Fatima Center
is absolutely correct in stating that the Host that was attempted to
be sold on eBay was stolen as Holy Communion is distributed to Catholics
to be consumed and not kept on their person, eBay was simply doing that
which comes only too natural in a world where Christ is not recognized
confessionally by a nation as its King and where Our Lady is not honored
publicly by a nation as its Queen. After all, if we can kill little
babies in the womb up to the day of birth in this country and starve
and dehydrated brain-damaged and/or elderly people who have outlived
their "usefulness," how are people without the true Faith
and who live in a country that mocks the true Faith going to accept
that God Himself is Incarnate under the appearance of a consecrated
Host?

Mind you,
eBay is not to be exculpated for its wrongdoing in offering a consecrated
Host for sale. Not at all. Despite the outcome announced today, April
16, 2005, pressure must continue to be brought on eBay's executives
to convince them to cease and desist from such sacrileges immediately.
What I am saying, however, is that a world that has rejected the Social
Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen is one that
degenerates only too logically to the depths of human depravity to and
acts of utter contempt for the very Real Presence of the God-Man Himself.
The real fault, you see, does not lie in eBay.

While giving
great thanks to Our Lord and Our Lady for the protection of the consecrated
Host, it must be pointed out, though, that the real fault lies in the
fact that a person, in this case a non-Catholic, was able to get his
hands on Holy Communion at all, something that would not have been possible
in the Catholic Church until 1977. The real fault lies in the sacrilege
that is Communion in the hand, a novelty that was introduced by Pope
Paul VI in 1977 after many episcopal conferences, including the then
named National Conference of Catholic Bishops here in the United States
of America, petitioned His Holiness to say that Communion in the hand,
which was being distributed disobediently by bishops and priests around
the world, had become an "accepted practice" that had to be
sanctioned by the Church. Thus began an unparalleled era of commonplace
acts of desecration and sacrilege being committed against the Most
Blessed Sacrament in Catholic churches around the world almost every
day of the year.

The late Michael Davies
wrote an excellent treatise on the subject of Communion in the hand.
It may be found at Michael
Davies on Communion in the hand. This excellent monograph speaks
for itself and needs no explication from me. For purposes of this present
article, however, I do want to emphasize the following points so that
the Catholics who are rightly outraged over eBay's policies and its
defense of same may come to realize that the real culprit in this sorry
episode is the ethos wrought by the liturgical revolution foisted upon
the Church by the late Archbishop Annibable Bugnini and his fellow Jacobins
in their Reign of Terror against Catholic Tradition as the bulwark of
the Catholic Faith.

1) Communion
in the hand, which existed in some places in some circumstances in the
first millennium of the Church, was prohibited by the Church precisely
because of the sorts of abuses and sacrileges that have been happening
on a much wider scale, given the near-universality of Communion in the
hand, today.

2) The Church,
inspired by the Holy Ghost, came to understand that only the hands of
the ordained priest or deacon should touch the Holy Eucharist. This
was a legitimate development of doctrine that came to be reflected in
the Church's absolute prohibition against the hands of the non-ordained
touching the Most Blessed Sacrament.

3) Reflecting
on Our Lord's command to the first pope, Saint Peter, to "Feed
my lambs," "Feed my lambs," Tend my sheep," Holy
Mother Church recognized that we, the sheep of Christ's true Flock,
must have the humility to fed by an alter Christus, an image
of the Good Shepherd Himself, as a shepherd would feed his flock: on
the tongue. Sheep cannot feed themselves. They need to be fed. It is
not an uncommon practice for children to place bits of feed on a sheep's
tongue at a petting farm. Sheep are dependent upon the shepherd. We
must be dependent upon the Good Shepherd. This is a sign of our humility
and our dependence upon the One Who is feeding us with His own Body,
Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

4) Pope Pius
XII noted in Mediator Dei, his Encyclical Letter on the Sacred
Liturgy that preceded Sacrosanctum Concilium by sixteen years
(and which was referenced precisely once, at Paragraph 22, in that first
document issued by the Second Vatican Council), that Catholics should
not desire to "restore" obsolete rites and practices in the
name of "simplicity," ignoring the fruits for the Church and
thus for souls that had been borne as a result of the abandonment of
ancient practices (such as Communion in the hand and Communion under
both kinds):

The
same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the
restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately.
The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration.
But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either
in its own right or in its significancefor later times and new situations,
on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity.
The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect.
They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the
Church in every age even to the consummation of the world.[52] They
are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ
to promote and procure the sanctity of man.

Assuredly it is a wise and most laudable thing to return in spirit and
affection to the sources of the sacred liturgy. For research in this
field of study, by tracing it back to its origins, contributes valuable
assistance towards a more thorough and careful investigation of the
significance of feast-days, and of the meaning of the texts and sacred
ceremonies employed on their occasion. But it is neither wise nor
laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device.
Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight
path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form;
were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments;
were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches;
were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's
body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he
to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where
it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See.

Clearly
no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian
doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church,
under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant
fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas.
No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation
of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources
of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one
who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity,
discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence
to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.

This
way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism
to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts
to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling
of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous
harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the
"deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had
every right and reason to condemn.[53] For perverse designs and ventures
of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification
by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly
Father of their souls' salvation.

5) It must
be remembered, therefore, that the appeal to "antiquity" by
the Catholic leaders of the "Liturgical Movement" throughout
the Twentieth Century sought to make the antiquarian claims of the Protestant
Revolutionaries "respectable" in the eyes of the hierarchy
and thus serve as the foundation for what was claimed to be a "much
needed" reform of the Sacred Liturgy. This matter was discussed
in G.I.R.M. Warfare:

Indeed,
it appears as though the authors of GIRM (and the liturgical
revolutionaries on the Consilium who devised the new Mass) hope to lure
traditionally minded Catholics into something of a trap. Some traditional
Catholics might be tempted to reflexively dismiss GIRM and the new Mass
as an attempt to Protestantantize Catholic worship, which it is, of
course. However, it is important, though, to recognize that some elements
of the new Mass that enshrine the spirit of the Protestant Revolution
do indeed have Catholic roots. Although there was never “Mass
facing the people,” Communion in the hand was an accepted practice
in the Catholic Church for centuries and Communion under both kinds
lasted longer than Communion in the hand, ending somewhere around the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, there were good pastoral
and dogmatic reasons why the Church discontinued both practices.

Acting in a spirit quite similar to that of our contemporary revolutionaries,
Protestant Revolutionaries claimed to be “recapturing” the
“purity” of the “Christian liturgy” when Communion
in the hand and Communion under both kinds became common practices in
most Protestant worship ceremonies. As Father Joseph Jungmann, S.J.,
noted, “When the chalice Communion was already practically forgotten,
it was seized upon by hostile groups and made a symbol of their movement.”
(It should be noted, though, that the Church granted Communion under
both kinds in monasteries and in some coronation Masses for emperors
and kings.) Thus, as will be discussed much later in this analysis,
even though Communion under both kinds was once a practice in the Catholic
Church, its bandonment in the Latin Rite for solid pastoral reasons
was something seized upon by Protestants as robbing “the people”
of the true spirit and sources of the liturgy. This is exactly what
our contemporary revolutionaries have done and are doing.

Similarly, Communion in the hand had for the Protestants (and has for
our own revolutionaries) a very important theological significance,
no matter that it was once a practice in the Catholic Church which was
later prohibited. As Ferrara and Woods point out [in The Great Facade],
“When the German Protestant Martin Bucer suggested that English
Protestants introduce the practice of Communion in the hand, he did
so because, as he said at the time, this novel practice would undermine
two Catholic teachings at once: the priesthood and the Real Presence.
Allowing the faithful to receive the Eucharist in their hands would
tend to establish the belief that the Host was nothing more than ordinary
bread (so indeed why shouldn’t the faithful be able to touch it?)
And that there was nothing special or unique about the priest that should
entitle him alone to handle the sacred species. Bucer knew full well
what he was doing.” So do our contemporary revolutionaries, those
who appeal to the distant Catholic past, either one that actually existed
or is projected by their imaginations as having existed, to adapt abandoned
practices that have served the purposes of Protestantism, not Catholicism.

As,
therefore, every superstition of the Roman AntiChrist is to be detested,
and the simplicity of Christ, and the Apostles, and the ancient Churches,
is to be recalled, I should wish that pastors and teachers of the people
should be commanded that each is faithfully to teach the people that
it is superstitious and wicked to think that the hands of those who
truly believe in Christ are less pure than their mouths; or that the
hands of the ministers are holier than the hands of the laity; so that
it would be wicked, or less fitting, as was formerly wrongly believed
by the ordinary folk, for the laity to receive these sacraments in the
hand: and therefore that the indications of this wicked belief be removed
----- as that the ministers may handle the sacraments, but not allow
the laity to do so, and instead put the sacraments into the mouth -----
which is not only foreign to what was instituted by the Lord but offensive
to human reason.

In
that way good men will be easily brought to the point of all receiving
the sacred symbols in the hand, conformity in receiving will be kept,
and there will be safeguards against all furtive abuse of the sacraments.
For, although for a time concession can be made to those whose faith
is weak, by giving them the Sacraments in the mouth when they so desire,
if they are carefully taught they will soon conform themselves to the
rest of the Church and take the Sacraments in the hand.

6) The sacrileges
that have been engendered by the restoration of Communion in the hand
by Pope Paul VI in 1977 have been well-documented. Pope John Paul II
deplored them in Dominicae Cenae in 1980. He did not end the
practice, though, and lived long enough to preside personally at Masses
where the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the One Whose vicar
he was for twenty-six years, five months and sixteen days was trampled
underfoot, manhandled and stolen, as Father Paul Kramer noted with respect
to the eBay outrage, to be sold or used in black Masses. These things
were pointed out to the Holy Father repeatedly. Committed to the ossified
formulas of a revolution that has devastated the Catholic Faith, the
late Holy Father refused to act in defense of the the integrity of the
Most Blessed Sacrament. When all is said and done, though, it must be
remembered that then Archbishop Karol Wojtyla said in 1965, "The
basic elements, the bread and wine, will remain the same. Everything
else, though, must change." And change it did, to the detriment
of the Church and the souls entrusted to her pastoral care for their
sanctification and salvation.

7) A priest
who offered a Novus Ordo Missae for the Eternal Word Television
Network early on a morning in July of 2003 used his sermon to speak
about a mystic, who had the approval of her local bishop in Brazil,
who had seen images of priests and lay men and women in Purgatory with
their hands on fire. The hands of the priests were on fire for having
given out Communion in the hand to the non-ordained; the hands of the
laity were on firing for having taken Communion in the hand. The priest
went on at some length about this mystic's vision. By the time the Mass
was rebroadcast at noon, Eastern time, however, the sermon had been
edited, rather choppily, to remove all reference to this particular
vision. The fact that EWTN saw fit to censor such a sermon is a quite
telling commentary on the extent to which those who promote the notion
of this being the "springtime of the Church" do not want anyone,
especially a priest, casting aspersions on the papally approved practices
that have devastated the Faith and subjected Our Lord in His Real Presence
to grave sacrileges. The censoring of the priest's sermon on EWTN
is particularly noteworthy as it used to be the case, especially in
the 1980s, that all manner of unapproved seers and stories
of at least one apparition condemned by a local bishop made
their way onto the EWTN airwaves on a quite regular basis.

8) The words of the
late Father Frederick Schell, S.J., come to mind at this point. Father
Schell, who had left the Jesuits in the 1970s and was assisting parishes
in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange, was told
in 1977 that he would have to distribute Holy Communion in the hand.
His response was direct and to the point, "It's a sacrilege. They
can't make me do it." He preached against it from the pulpit on
November 13, 1977. He was gone by the next week, one week before the
"implementation" of this "restoration" on the First
Sunday in Advent in 1977, eventually returning to the offering of the
Traditional Latin Mass in order to provide the people of southern California
with the safe haven provided by the stability of the glories of a liturgical
rite that communicates in all of its parts the absolute
and firm distinction between the hierarchical priesthood of
the ordained priest and the common priesthood of the lay faithful (whereby
we in the laity help to sanctify the world by cooperating with the graces
made available to us in the sacraments to give honor and glory to God
in all that we do and by uniting our petitions interiorly with those
of the priest as He offers the ineffable Sacrifice of the altar that
is Holy Mass).

9) Yes, sacrileges
against the Blessed Sacrament occurred before the Second Vatican Council
and the Novus Ordo Missae. Freemasons and other enemies of
Our Lord and His true Church paid large sums of money to obtain consecrated
Hosts to desecrate. Consecrated Hosts were stolen from tabernacles,
to be sure. Indeed, Saint Michael the Archangel Church in Farmingville,
New York, administered by the Society of Saint Pius X, has had two acts
of desecration committed within the past decade that resulted in the
vandalizing of the tabernacle and the desecration of consecrated Hosts.
This having been noted, however, there has never been a period in the
history of the Church when it was as possible as today to obtain a consecrated
Host and to subject It to acts of desecration, up to and including being
used in black Masses. This is all the rotten fruit of the distribution
of Holy Communion in the hand as part and parcel of the logic of the
liturgical revolution engineered by Annibale Bugnini and his band of
liturgical thieves and thugs. The loss of belief in and reverence towards
the Real Presence of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed
Sacrament is a direct result of the Novus Ordo Missae and all
of the novelties and innovations it has engendered, including the architecture
and design of Catholic church buildings.

Sadly, there
continue to be otherwise intelligent people who continue to justify
the liturgical revolution by ignoring the dispassionate scholarship
that has disproved the antiquarian presuppositions of the Augustinian
liturgist Pius Parsch that were at the foundation of Sacrosanctum
Concilium and who refuse to acknowledge that Annibale Bugnini was
quoted as early as 1965 as saying that it was important to eliminate
as much of what was considered authentically Catholic in the Mass as
possible so as to appeal to Protestants. These people, who are trying
to reconcile the novelties of the past forty to fifty years with the
authentic Tradition of the Catholic Church, can assure themselves all
they want about the fact that Bugnini was sent into exile by Pope Paul
VI in the 1970s when evidence of his Masonic ties was presented to the
then Holy Father. The spirit of the late Secretary of the Consilium,
though, still guides the Novus Ordo Missae: his fervent acolytes,
Virgilio Noe and Piero Marini, exercised great influence throughout
the pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II. Marini even admitted
in 2003 that Papal Masses had been planned with all kinds of innovations
so as to establish "precedents" for the future. No pope of
the glories of Tradition would be smiling down from Heaven as a Mass
that contains so many legitimate options from which celebrants may choose
on a regular basis and which has eliminated in its Latin editio
typica all references to the possibility of men losing their souls
for all eternity is considered normative in the Latin Rite of the Catholic
Church. The new Mass, even when offered in Latin, is not a link to Tradition
but a revolutionary embrace of the ethos of Protestantism in the name
of "restoring" the "simplicity" of the Catholic
past. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply wrong. The evidence amassed
by Father Romano Tommassi on the real objectives of the members of the
Consilium is there for all who have the honesty to admit and to act
accordingly.

The late Monsignor
Klaus Gamber, who was not a traditionalist, did not consider the Novus
Ordo Missae to be a victory for the cause of Tradition. Monsignor
Gamber was in favor of some liturgical changes and did not appreciate
the true perfection contained within the Immemorial Mass of Tradition,
thereby predisposing him to the consideration of some limited reforms
and changes. However, he also noted the following in The Reform
of the Roman Liturgy:

The
"traditionalist" priest will always stand in front of the
altar, as has been commonly done in the Eastern Church and in the Western
Church throughout history. They are priests offering a sacrifice who,
together with the faithful, face God.

The
other priests function as presiders over a Eucharistic meal, and from
their seats, or from behind the altar facing the people, which has become
a table, they direct their gaze towards the assembled faithful. They
are, apparently, not troubled in the least by the fact that their backs
on turned on the former High Altar and on the tabernacle--the altar
at which, only a few years ago, the holy sacrifice of the Mass was offered
and on which the eyes of the praying faithful had been focused.

In
the years before the reform, no Catholic could have imagined that the
Roman Church, founded on the Rock of Peter, would undergo such changes
and at the same time cause such confusion among its members.

Of
course, it is true that there have been progressives, particularly during
the Age of Enlightenment, who, in part because of erroneous interpretations
of history, in part because of "modern" theological views,
pressed for changes in the liturgy as it was then practiced. In the
past, the Church's teaching Magisterium has carefully guarded against
such developments and has always been able to control the emergence
of radical ideas.

Now,
all this has fundamentally changed. Today, those who out of a sense
of personal belief hold firm to what until recently had been strictly
prescribed by the Roman Church are treated with condescension by many
of their own brothers. They face problems if they continue to nurture
the very rite in which they were brought up and to which they have been
consecrated. That theirs was a decision made as a matter of conscience
and that their conscience is being sorely tested is of little consequence
to those who oppose them.

On
the other side, the progressives who see little or no value in tradition
can do almost no wrong, and are usually given the benefit of the doubt,
even they defend opinions which clearly contradict Catholic teaching.

To
add to this spiritual confusion, we are also dealing with the satiated
state of mind of modern man who, living in our consumer society, approaches
anything that is holy with a complete lack of understanding and has
no appreciation of the concept of religion, let alone of his own sinful
state. For them God, if they believe in Him at all, exists only as their
"friend."

At
this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand
years old and until now the heart of the Church, was destroyed. A closer
examination reveals that the Roman rite was not perfect and that some
elements of value had atrophied over the centuries. Yet, through all
the periods of unrest that again and again shook the Church to her foundations,
the Roman rite always remained the rock, the secure home of faith and
piety.

After discussing the sorts
of reforms that he thought would have been consonant with Sacroscanctum
Concilium, Gamber discusses the disparity between Catholic Tradition
and the Novus Ordo Missae:

Liturgy
and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a
rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology.
The traditional liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its
established form because it was permeated with the truths of the traditional
faith and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was
abolished and the new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were
the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages
that did not square with the teachings of modern theology--for example,
references to a God who judges and punishes.

At
the same time, the priests and the faithful are told that the new liturgy
created after the Second Vatican Council is identifical in essence with
the liturgy that has been in use in the Catholic Church up to this point,
and that the only changes introduced involved reviving some earlier
liturgical forms and removing a few duplications, but above all getting
rid of elements of no particular interest.

Most
priests accepted these assurances about the continuity of liturgical
forms of worship and accepted the new rite with the same unquestioning
obedience with which they had accepted the minor ritual changes introduced
by Rome from time to time in the past, changes beginning with the reform
of the Divine Office and the liturgical chant introduced by Pope Saint
Pius X.

Following
this strategy, the groups pushing for reform were able to take advantage
of and at the same time abuse the sense of obedience among the older
priests, and the common good will of the majority of the faithful, while,
in many cases, they themselves refused to obey.

The
pastoral benefits that so many idealists had hoped the new liturgy would
bring did not materialize. Our churches emptied in spite of the new
liturgy (or because of it?), and the faithful continue to fall away
from the Church in droves.

Although
our young people have been literally seduced into supporting the new
forms of liturgical worship, they have, in fact, become more and more
alienated from the faith. They are drawn to religious sects--Christian
and non-Christian ones--because fewer and fewer priests teach them the
riches of our Catholic faith and the tenets of Christian morality. As
for older people, the radical changes made to the traditional liturgy
have taken from them the sense of security in their religious home.

Today,
many among us wonder: Is this the Spring people had hoped would emerge
from the Second Vatican Council? Instead of a genuine renewal in our
Church, we have seen only novelties. Instead of our religious life entering
a period of new invigoration, as has happened in the past, what we see
now is a form of Christianity that has turned towards the world.

We
are now involved in a liturgy in which God is no longer the center of
our attention. Today, the eyes of our faithful are no longer focused
on God's Son having become Man hanging before us on the cross, or on
the pictures of His saints, but on the human community assembled for
a commemorative meal. The assembly of people is sitting there, face
to face with the "presider," expecting from him, in according
with the "modern" spirit of the Church, not so much a transfer
of God's grace, but primarily some good ideas and advice on how to deal
with daily life and its challenges.

There
are few people left who speak of the Holy Mass as the Sacrifice of the
New Covenant which we offer to God the Father through Jesus Christ,
or of the sacramental union with Christ that we experience when we receive
Holy Communion. Today, we are dealing with the "Eucharistic feast,"
and with the "holy bread"to be shared among us as a sign of
our brotherhood with Jesus.

The
real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman rite
with a history of more than one thousand years, is the wholesale destruction
of the faith on which it was based, a faith that had been the source
of our piety and of our courage to bear witness to Christ and His Church,
the inspiration of countless Catholics over so many centuries. Will
someone, some day, be able to say the same thing about the new Mass?

Unfortunately,
Monsignor Gamber believed that an absolute return to the integrity of
the Immemorial Mass of Tradition before it was attacked by Bugnini in
1955 was probably not desirable. He believed in what has been called
"the reform of the reform." That having been noted as a matter
of intellectual honesty, Gamber's analysis of the actual state of the
so-called liturgical "renewal" was founded on a rejection
of the claim that the Novus Ordo Missae was a continuation
of Tradition. It is not. The Novus Ordo Missae has devastated
the Catholic Faith and is responsible for giving rise to the "restoration"
of one formerly and properly abandoned practice of antiquity after another,
thus creating the very conditions in which the Most Blessed Sacrament
is abused in Catholic churches on a daily basis and thus subjected to
unspeakable sacrileges and offenses.

The only sure
way to guard against the abuses engendered against belief in and reverence
towards the Most Blessed Sacrament in the Latin (or Roman) Rite of the
Catholic Church is to restore the Traditional Latin Mass as normative.
The Novus Ordo Missae is so fungible that it can be offered
in different ways by the same priest in back-to-back Masses in the same
parish. Congregationalism has replaced the universality of the worship
of God, thereby offending God in the manner and the form of the worship
given unto Him in Catholic churches and bewildering the faithful into
thinking that everything contained in the Deposit of Faith is as mutable
as the offering of Holy Mass. It is not "heartache" or some
irrational, emotional "attachment" to the "past"
that prompts a Catholic to seek the restoration of Tradition without
any taint of the novelties of the past fifty years. No, it
is a love for God and the recognition of what gives Him the greatest
honor and glory that prompts a Catholic to point out, sometimes repeatedly,
the harm of the Novus Ordo Missae and the infinite beauty and
perfection contained in the Mass of all ages.

While we should
continue to protest the actions of eBay in making a consecrated Host
available for purchase and seek to secure from its executives a pledge
that this will never happen again, we must never miss the real culprit
in all of this: the novelties of the Novus Ordo Missae promulgated
by Pope Paul VI and praised ceaselessly by the late Pope John Paul II.
Catholics were taught years ago to consume the Host immediately upon
receiving It on their tongues as they knelt at the Communion Rail. They
were not to leave the Communion Rail before having consumed the Host,
which was made of matter that was readily soluble for easy consumption.
All of this has now changed, making it possible for countless sacrileges
to be committed on a regular basis as members of the hierarchy, from
the late pontiff to the members of the College of Cardinals to diocesan
ordinaries to priests and many millions of well-meaning lay men and
women insist that this is the "springtime of the Church."
If this is springtime, folks, I would hate to see what winter looks
like. Regular sacrileges against the Blessed Sacrament of the nature
we are witnessing at present are unprecedented in the history of the
Church and are not consonant with anything that is of God.
Period. (And this is not even to discuss the matter of Communion under
both kinds, which is reviewed at length in G.I.R.M. Warfare.)

We continue to pray
for the soul of the late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. And we continue
to pray for the cardinal electors as they convene on Monday to elect
the next pope. Speculation is useless. Worry is pointless. We need to
maintain the Supernatural Virtue of Hope, keeping firm on our knees
before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer and beseeching Our Lady and Saint
Joseph and Saints Peter and Paul with total trust in their intercessory
power.

Our Lady,
Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph,
Patron of the Universal Church and Protector of the Faithful, pray for
us.